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McBLACK

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The paperback of my first graphic novel, McBLACK, will first become available at Melbourne Supanova on the 16th. I’ve been working on this bastard for five years now. Written and penciled by me, inked by Dave Gutierrez, cover by Ron Salas, 72 pages of sequential art plus a pinup and an illustrated song, the "Ballad of McBlack". It’s 10 bucks, and it’ll soon be available from the Blackglass Press webstore and from other sites. 

cover thumbnail 
In addition, I will be serializing the book online at www.mcblack.com, updating Monday-Wednesday-Friday. You have no excuse not to check it out–it’s free!

Lock and load,

— JF
 

KAGEMONO #2 reviewed at Scaryminds

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Scaryminds.com continues their Blackglass reviewfest with KAGEMONO #2, which they have given 9 stars:

"Kagemono #2 was just the right dose for an over wise rain drenched and miserable day; yes we do get them in Oz folks. I was once again highly impressed with Jason Franks writing, noted the deeper thoughts a number of the stories addressed, and grooved along to the artwork. There’s something subversive about Kagemono that kept me humming to Mr Franks’ beat."

Full review is here: http://www.scaryminds.com/reviews/2010/comic016.php

— JF

Rockstar Horror

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Another nice review up on scaryminds.com, this time a bit of a blast from the past with ROCKSTAR PIZZA (2006):

http://www.scaryminds.com/reviews/2010/comic014.php

Eight stars–that makes me feel good. The reviewer has a lot of nice things to say, and he’s even charitable to my own artwork (I was so unhappy with that story that I stopped drawing for years after finishing it), but what impressed me was this:

"While the only story in the collection that can be considered pure horror is Peas, each of the other three have a dark underpinning recognisable as a denizen of the dark genre forest. Jason Franks, as a writer, presents a world view in rockstar Pizza where there is no safe underpinning and where at any moment the floor might give way, spinning things into a vortex of chaos and unexpected outcomes."

That is a really nice encapsulation of my attitude to storytelling. In the books I did prior to KAGEMONO I didn’t give any thought to genre. I did not, in my head, make any genre distinctions when I was writing them, I just wrote the stories I wanted to. After the third one came out and I got tired of hearing "What’s the theme?" and "These stories are all different," that I decided to focus KAGEMONO on horror stories.

Ask me twice and I’ll tell you that everything I write is, in one respect or another, a horror story.

Scaryminds placed a large order on the Blackglass website a few weeks ago and they are working their way through it, so expect a couple more of these in the weeks to come.  Also, if you are a fan of horror or dark fiction and you’re interested in what’s going on in Australia and New Zealand, please take some time to explore the site: they have great coverage of books and movies as well as comics. 

Cheers,

— JF

KAGEMONO #1 reviewed on Scaryminds

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A quite exhaustive review of KAGEMONO #1 just went up on scaryminds.com:

"Yes folks, in keeping with other Down Under comic Publishers Black Glass are hitting the newsstands with a comic that not only rivals the big publications coming out of the U.S but costs about as much as a schooner of beer at a decent hotel. The scripting is damned fine here, once again I’ll emphasis that there’s more going on under the hood than it first appears, with each story in the issue being well constructed. The artwork ranges from classic fantasy, through Japanese inspired anime, to pretty simple panels."

A really nice review; the author understands exactly what we’re going for and he says something about every story , mentions every writer and artist involved.

(Clicky here for the full review)

— JF